Time Capsule and Airport Extreme top sellers in their class

Time Capsule is topping the NAS category for recent sales, according to NPD. …

NPD Group has recently ranked Apple's Time Capsule and Airport Extreme at the top of their respective retail categories in the US, according to statements from Stephen Baker, vice president of Industry Analysis at NPD Group. Time Capsule topped sales of the network-attached storage category, while Airport Extreme was tops for routers.

Though the data only covers Time Capsule's first month of sales, it's worth noting that it didn't take any sales away from Airport Extreme. "For the last five or six months [AirPort Extreme] has been the number one or number two product, trading places with Linksys," NPD's Stephen Baker told Macworld. And it makes sense. Airport Extreme makes setting up a wireless network brain-dead simple, and the Airport configuration utility is far easier to use than most routers built-in web-based configuration.

Time Capsule builds on this by adding a 500GB or 1TB drive inside what is essentially an Airport Extreme for a zero-configuration file server. Apple mainly targets it as a wireless backup solution that works with Leopard's Time Machine. This brings automated wireless network backups into the realm of mere mortals, sysadmin certification not required.

So, if you need a broadband router that's simple to set up and use that has USB-based printer and file sharing, get an Airport Extreme. If you want built-in file-serving capabilities, especially if you're looking for storage for Time Machine backups, grab a Time Capsule. Both are simple to use, well-designed, and "just work." No wonder they're so popular with consumers.